I have two tables, members
and studentexam
. I want to fetch the members who are not registered for an exam. It means they dont have a row in studentexa
where examID
is a specific value. I tried this:
$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM members
WHERE accessLevel='student' AND IDNo NOT IN ("SELECT studentID,examID FROM studentexam WHERE examID = $examID")
ORDER BY family ASC");
I have two problems. First, there is a syntax error when use a sql statement into another because of ". I tried ' as well but got error again. the other, I guess if in the inner statement have just studentID
then got the right result. But in that way I cant use the where
clause.
Any help would be appreciated.
#1 You don't need the ""
around the sub query.
#2 You don't need to SELECT
a column to use it in the WHERE
clause.
$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM members
WHERE accessLevel='student' AND IDNo NOT IN (SELECT studentID FROM studentexam WHERE examID = $examID)
ORDER BY family ASC");
You pretty much answered your question yourself :p
In sub query you dont need to put "" just sub query direct
$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM members
WHERE IDNo NOT IN (SELECT studentID FROM studentexam WHERE examID = $examID) ORDER BY family ASC");
And that's all you want and you don't need to write accesslevel = 'Student' as i hope that each member would have his unique ID. Writing accesslevel = 'Student' will just increase load on MySQL.
An alternative to the NOT IN
in this case could be a LEFT JOIN
:
SELECT * FROM members m
LEFT JOIN studentexam se ON m.idno = se.studentId
WHERE m.accessLevel = 'student' AND se.studentId IS NULL AND examId = $examID
ORDER BY m.family